what's up guys saf you're on super saf TV and we are almost at the end of 2024 and that means it's time for my top five smartphone picks of the year now as always there are a few disclaimers before we start I have used lots of different smartphones this year as you can see but I've not used every single one so no doubt my list will be different to your list and that's absolutely fine guys we can still be friends drop your favorites down in the comments below and this list is in no particular order I'm just giving you my top five but I will be revealing my favorites my daily drivers in the upcoming super sa style collaboration with all my friends that we do every year so if you want to see that first then do subscribe and hit that Bell icon so you don't miss it now with all of that out the way let's get to the list so the first Mone in my list once again in no particular order is well let's do an iPhone because there was no iPhone featured in my media list because there was no new iPhone out at that time my iPhone of choice in 2024 it's an obvious one it's the iPhone 16 Pro Max I use my iPhone 16 Pro Max every single day I like the larger display I love the consistent cameras and I still think as an overall camera package it is my go-to we've still got some of the best video quality on any smartphone with 4K 120 frames a second which other smartphones do offer but the amount of control that you have on that slow motion is the best on the iPhone in my opinion we've got amazing battery life and exceptional performance with the a18 pro which handles anything that you throw at it and it's also great for console level gaming now of course the main headline feature for the new iPhones was Apple intelligence but the new iPhones didn't launch with apple intelligence and it has been a roll out and we still won't get all of the features until sometime next year but so far from what I've been using although I don't use all of them the ones that have really stood out to me notification summaries somebody that's on so many different group chats it's nice just to have a quick summary and really see if it requ has my attention or not and the other Apple intelligence feature that I have been using is recording audio and then generating transcripts and summaries and this is so useful for meetings and we have to talk about the camera control button I'm going to be completely honest with you I pretty much never use it and that's something that I found with my p as well everybody that I've asked has said I don't use it at all now I think Apple try to go for the best of both WS for portrait and landscape shooting but in doing so they've made it impractical for both uses when you're using it portrait it's too low when you're using in landscape it's too in and like many others that I've spoken to they've just stopped using it all together but despite that the iPhone 16 Pro Max is an amazing smartphone and it's definitely one of the best of 2024 an honorable mention has to go to the iPhone 16 Pro if you're somebody who doesn't want a huge smartphone and doesn't want to really have any compromises then the iPhone 16 Pro offers pretty much everything that the iPhone 16 Pro Max does apart from that larger display and the battery life but you still do get things like that 5x zoom camera now let's move on to the next smartphone in my list now this Smartphone was actually one of the first smartphones to release this year and it still holds up it made my top five list in the midia video to and is of course the Samsung Galaxy s24 Ultra now this is just an amazing allrounder it taks all of the boxes I really do like the new flat display with gorilla glass armor which reduces Reflections and really makes a big difference when you're viewing the screen day to-day the new five time zoom camera performs really well for portraits and it's also great for extended Zoom we've got the Snapdragon H gen 3 for Galaxy across the board meaning we've got amazing performance and then we have the S Pen which is something that I don't use every day but when I do use it I'm so glad it's there Samsung has promised seven generations of Android OS updates which is amazing and they've actually lived up I've had lots of updates on my s24 ultra including new AI features now I'm going to be honest with you I don't use all of them especially some of the live translate features I think they are very very specific but there are some AI features which I've gotten so used to that I can't live without summarizing web pages is something that I use pretty much every single day instead of having to read a long article just getting a quick summary is so useful and I absolutely love sketch to image now this is a bit of a fun feature it's something that you might not be using every day but it works so well and I've had so much fun making memes and things with friends and people are just like blown away when they see how good good the results can be battery life is also good although I would say it's not as good as some other smartphones out there and I do have to give some honorable mentions to the s24 and the s24 plus which give you a lot of what the s24 ultra offers but at a lower price now although Samsung did absolutely amazing with the s24 series one area where I think they were kind of lazy and didn't do so well is with their full series the Samsung Galaxy Zed full 6 does not make my top five list because it was a very incremental update and instead we've got much better foldables in my opinion at least when it comes to the hardware and the one that's right on top for me is the honor magic V3 and that is the best widely available foldable in my opinion it's an impossible 4. 35 mm when it's unfolded just 9. 2 mm when it's folded and it weighs 226 G which means that on your day today with it 6.
43 in cover screen you can use it as a regular smartphone but then when you do want to do some gaming multitasking or something that requires the larger screen then you can reveal that beautiful 7. 92 in 120 HZ display the hardware on the honor magic V3 is honestly mind-blowing and we have a huge 5,150 mAh battery which they've managed to fit in to this compact form factor with 66 WS of supercharging and 50 WS of Wireless charging no compromises it has an ipx8 rating and we've got Flagship level cameras 50 megapixel primary a 40 megap Ultra wide as well as an ultra slim 50 megap Periscope telephoto camera with 3. 5 times Optical Zoo performance is great with a Snapdragon 8 gen 3 and although we don't have as many years of software updates promise compared to the likes of Google and Samsung we still have a respectable 4 years of OS updates and 5 years of security patches we have some useful AI features such as face to- face translation but we don't have many generative AI features like we have on the competition but nevertheless this is easily one of my favorite foldables of all time now I have to give some honorable mentions to other foldables that we saw this year Samsung although they didn't do a great job with the fold 6 we do have the fold 6 special edition which is what the fold 6 should have been that wasn't widely available and if it was then that might have made my list Vivo did an amazing job with the Vivo XF 3 Pro and Huawei with the mate XD the world's first trip affordable I was absolutely blown away by this and I really really wish H we was still fully in the Western Market so I could purchase it easily unfortunately it's like $5,000 and I don't have $5,000 to spare Google also did a great job with the pixel9 pro fold which is a huge step up in Hardware compared to the previous generation but the pixel that made my list is the Google pixel 9 Pro XL now I've always loved the visor design that Google have had for a few years I think the pixel9 pro and pro XL have a great Evolution to this unique Visa design it's probably one of the only smartphones out there that's not going to rock on the table you've got a beautiful 6.
8in ltpo display we finally got an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner which works really well and we've got great cameras with that pixel look which I really like especially for video with video boost in my super style camera comparison of the gole pixel9 Pro XL versus the iPhone 16 Pro Max in many instances I actually found the pixel to have better video quality with video boost being a Google device Google have promised 7 years of os and security updates and we've got some really cool AI features some of them might be gimmicky but the one that I found myself using quite a bit was adme and it's such a useful feature so much so that there's been many instances where I've not had the Google pixel with me and I've wished that the device I was using had add me so I could use it now as much as I love the photos and videos that come out of the Google pixel9 pro one area that they definitely have to improve is with portrait mode portrait mode was really hit a Miss on the pixel 9 Pro XL in my experience hopefully this can be improve your software updates and although video is amazing it does need to be uploaded to the cloud processed and it has to come back a few hours later and if you're somebody that's not very patient and wants to post stuff straight away then this is definitely going to be a disadvantage on the pixel and although the performance is absolutely fine for your day today with the tens G4 it just doesn't live up to the performance to the likes of the Snapdragon 8 gen 3 for the Apple a18 Pro now if you are somebody that's after performance you love gaming then the final smartphone on my list once again in no particular order is going to be the smartphone for you and that is the Rog phone 9 pro and pro 9 Edition now you might be thinking hold on saf is this not a 2025 smartphone well Asus went ahead and released it super early in November and it's still 2024 so I'm going to count it as a 2024 smartphone now the RG phone 9 Pro is absolute Beast you've got the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform you've got up to 24 GB of RAM with 1 tab of storage and if you're somebody who likes to game for long periods of time then with the aeroactive cooler it's going to keep things super cool for sustained performance now although this device is is built for gaming it still is an excellent smartphone regardless you've got a beautiful 6.
